Deeplinks Blog posts about Free Speech

In the last two months, two different federal courts have ruled on whether the Fifth Amendment's right against self-incrimination applies to the act of decrypting the contents of a computer. We wrote amicus briefs (PDF) in each case arguing the Fifth Amendment did prevent forced decryption when that act would incriminate a witness. And while our arguments were similar in both courts, the results were different.

For years, Denmark has continued to block websites hosting sexually abusive images of children. In a recent attempt to do so, Danish police accidentally censored thousands of websites for several hours, including Google and Facebook. Visitors to the blocked sites were met with a page stating that the sites had been made inaccessible by the country's High Tech Crime Unit.

A few weeks ago, we started seeing reports of a Trojan called Darkcomet RAT on computers belonging to Syrian activists which would capture webcam activity, disable the notification setting for certain antivirus programs, record key strokes, steal passwords, and more--and send that sensitive information to an address in Syrian IP space. Symantec's writeup and recommendations are available here.

Now we've seen reports of new malware, Xtreme RAT, which sends data back to the same address in Syrian IP space and whose release appears to predate the Darkcomet RAT Trojan. Reports indicate the Trojan is being spread through email and chat programs. The malware was used to log keystrokes and take screenshots of the victim's computer, and it is likely that other functionality was also used.

Recently, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald reported that Idaho billionaire and CEO of Melaleuca, Inc., Frank VanderSloot, has been engaged in a systematic campaign to silence journalists and bloggers from publishing stories about his political views and business practices. VanderSloot and Melaleuca have targeted national news organizations and small town bloggers alike by issuing bogus legal threats alleging defamation and copyright infringement in an attempt to keep legitimate newsworthy information from being released to the public.

EFF is pleased to see that Websense, a company that produces Internet filtering technology, has issued a statement against Pakistan’s call for proposals [PDF] for companies to assist with their pervasive censorship plans. Websense’s statement, posted on their website also calls upon other producers of filtering technology to refuse complicity with Pakistan’s plans, which run counter to the right to free expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.